Reflections Journal: Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy will publish a special series that celebrates African American Contributions to Service Learning and Community Literacy.

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities and African American Literacy Partnerships issue will focus on literacy partnerships between historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) and community organizations and institutions. From their inception to the present, HBCUs have partnered with the communities that they serve to promote literacy in African American communities. Whether it was African American churches offering their physical space to begin a college in the 1800s or an HBCU partnering with a community center to promote digital literacy in the 21st Century, these literacy partnerships are sites of rich literacy practices and activities. We invite submissions that discuss HBCU partnerships situated within a historical and/or contemporary setting and from diverse scholarly perspectives (ethnography, case study, social policy, historiography, theoretical, and so on). We welcome scholarly articles that include visual elements. With this issue, we hope to turn a scholarly gaze toward the research practices and sites situated at the intersection of HBCUs and their community constituents. More specifically, we seek to highlight the community-school literacy partnerships that expand our understanding of collaborative literacy practices, that demonstrate complex collaborative relationships built around literacy, that model school-community literacy partnerships, and, most importantly, that contribute new voices to current scholarly conversations on African American literacy practices.

We invite you to contribute to this special HBCU issue. Manuscripts should be between 5000 and 6000 words and should be sent as electronic submissions to Reva E. Sias (resias@syr.edu). Submissions should conform to MLA guidelines. Please include a brief abstract (300 words) with your submissions. Attach the manuscript as a Word or Word-compatible document to an email. All manuscripts must be submitted before 12 a.m., October 29, 2010.